Obama: ‘Hearts Must Change’ To End Racism

President Obama declared in his farewell address on Tuesday that white Americans need to better understand how slavery and enduring prejudice have affected African-Americans and other minorities.

Breitbart News reported that Obama defended ”laws against discrimination – in hiring, in housing, in education and the criminal justice system.” The country’s first black president argued that the regulations are “what our Constitution and highest ideals require,” but acknowledged that “laws alone won’t be enough.”

“Hearts must change,” he explained. “If our democracy is to work in this increasingly diverse nation, each one of us must try to heed the advice of one of the great characters in American fiction, Atticus Finch, who said, ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’”

Obama suggested that racial minorities should be “tying our own struggles for justice to the challenges that a lot of people in this country face – the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender American, and also the middle-aged white man who from the outside may seem like he’s got all the advantages, but who’s seen his world upended by economic, cultural, and technological change.”

The president called on “white Americans” to recognize “that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn’t suddenly vanish in the ‘60s; that when minority groups voice discontent, they’re not just engaging in reverse racism or practicing political correctness; that when they wage peaceful protest, they’re not demanding special treatment, but the equal treatment our founders promised.”

Obama added: “For native-born Americans, it means reminding ourselves that the stereotypes about immigrants today were said, almost word for word, about the Irish, Italians, and Poles. America wasn’t weakened by the presence of these newcomers; they embraced this nation’s creed, and it was strengthened.”